This leads to some interesting questions. Were the people on the North Korean side working given access to more information about the world than the average citizen?

I would have to imagine they have to know more just to be able to interact normally with other people. I would think at some point in a meeting a casual conversation about current events would come up and if they did not know much about the outside world it would be a very weird (and likely raising some red flags) conversation.

Or were these interactions only ever over text, so no camera or anything which would help obfuscate that. It would also minimize the chance of there being those more causal human conversations.

Maybe they're not completely ignorant of the outside world but believing that that's the only way they would continue to isolate helps us feel better about ourselves?

No need to be complicated. Just ask about Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un.

>How do you feel about [recent event]?

>You're an American office worker with a college education and one of your coworkers just asked how you feel about [recent event]. Summarize the nature of the event in its cultural context and offer an opinion on it typical of someone in your position.

"Oh, I don't want to talk politics at all, I just want to treat work as work"

or other variations of it. Good enough for a few months.